Where I Left My Soul

by Jérôme Ferrari

  The Kabylian gives a start.

  “It’s a fine name, Abdelkrim Ait Kaci. A warrior’s name, a noble one. You were wrong to conceal it from us for so long. Besides, you see, you didn’t gain much by it. Not everyone is as brave as you.”

  The capitaine leans forward.

  “We don’t like this work, but we’re good at it,” he concludes in icy tones. Then he sits upright and draws calmly on his cigarette.

  (I’m playing a part, I’m a clown playing a part in a grim farce. A farce that has to be played out to the end, with no escape or remission. Every hair on my head is counted, every lie, every shameful trick. And the performance has to continue to the very end.)

  “As I told you, Abdelkrim, we shall not question you any further. But to set our minds at rest, now that we have your name, we’ll be putting a few questions to members of your family. Possibly to your young sister, who is sixteen, I believe, and has the same magnificent green eyes as you, I’m prepared to wager. My men would be really keen to question her.”

  Abdelkrim begins trembling. He buries his face in his hands.

  “My men would also be happy to question your mother. They’ll question any one at all, you know.”

  Abdelkrim’s chest is racked with sobs and tears spill out between his fingers.

  “I belong to the rebellion,” Abdelkrim says through his tears.

  Capitaine Degorce runs a hand through his hair in a gentle, almost fatherly, gesture.

  “Ah well, as for that, I know that already. I didn’t need you to tell me that, for heaven’s sake. I’m not an idiot, you know. It’s not enough, Abdelkrim. That’s by no means enough.”

  (No, it’s not enough. And feeling nauseous is not enough, nor is the rotten taste in one’s mouth. I must go on. On the day of Judgement you will summon the just to your right hand. Will you summon Abdelkrim? And what of me? What will you do with me? To what circle of hell will you wish to relegate me, among what kind of sinners?)

  Abdelkrim gives an address. A street in the European quarter near the Boulevard du Telemly.

  “Who shall I find at this address?” the capitaine asks.

  “I’ve no idea!”

  “Perhaps your sister will know? Or your mother? She’ll know, won’t she?”

  “No! I swear to God I’ve no idea! All I know is it’s an address we use. Before God, I swear it,” Abdelkrim yells, seizing the capitaine’s jacket.

  “Calm down. I believe you. I’ll go and see.”

  But Abdelkrim cannot stop weeping and shaking.

  “One last thing and I’ll leave you alone. Three names. The one who recruited you and the two you recruited yourself.”

  Abdelkrim gives the three names. Capitaine Degorce gets up and knocks on the door to summon Sergent Febvay. Abdelkrim is still in tears.

  “Sergent, don’t leave him alone, please. Not for a second. I don’t want him playing silly buggers with us.”

  The capitaine squats beside Abdelkrim.

  “Your sister and mother will never hear anything from us. You have my word.”

  Abdelkrim weeps even more.

  *

  “Moreau, get a vehicle and two men. We’re going to Telemly. We’ll leave in twenty minutes.”

  Capitaine Degorce marks the photograph of Abdelkrim pinned to his organization chart with a red cross. He writes the names he has just learned in the empty spaces next to it and passes them on to the general staff. He feels empty and disorientated. He sits on his desk and lights a cigarette, stubs it out at once. He picks up the letter from Jeanne-Marie and tears open the envelope in almost a single movement. “André, my child, my love, we think about you so much …” He puts the letter down and passes his hand over his face with a sigh. The relief that has just flooded through him quickly disappears and he finds himself alone once more, hopelessly numbed by a weariness so absolute he feels he will never recover from it. He looks up at the organization chart. He tries to tell himself that each red cross represents a bomb that will not go off. He tries to think of all the people whose lives have been saved and who will never know. But all this remains remote and abstract and all he can manage to summon up are vague, faceless ghosts.

  (One cannot count lives saved, one can only count deaths. I’m so weary of counting deaths. There is no end to my powerlessness.)

  He was trained in the use of that supreme logical system, mathematics. Once the givens of the problem have been clearly established, each inference has been rigorously derived from the preceding inference and Capitaine Degorce is compelled to admit that this splendid deductive chain imposes itself with the authority of absolute necessity, to which human reason is obliged to yield. He has long sought a flaw, but there is no flaw. From the givens of the problem the solution follows. It is very simple and there is nothing he can do about it. He is confronted by a conclusion that he can neither reject nor accept, and even if the entirety of his intellectual faculties is as if anaesthetized by it, he must daily set in motion without delay the practical consequences which this conclusion in its turn implies. The prisoners must talk. Everyone must talk. And it is strictly impossible to distinguish in advance those who remain silent in order to withhold information from those who have nothing to tell. Only the ordeal of pain distinguishes them. If it were possible the whole city should be questioned. There is nothing Capitaine Degorce can do about it. The only thing within his power is not to go beyond what logic demands.

  In January the owner and the inmates of a brothel in the High Casbah were massacred. Perhaps because the F.L.N. had placed a ban on prostitution and alcohol within the Arab quarter, perhaps because Si Messaoud, the brothel keeper, used to give information to the army. Perhaps for both reasons. When Capitaine Degorce, together with Moreau, his company adjudant-chef, and several harkis arrived at the site Lieutenant Horace Andreani’s men were in the middle of loading half a dozen Arabs with bruised faces into a lorry. They were surrounded by weeping women.

  “How’s things, André?” the lieutenant inquired.

  Capitaine Degorce gave him a filthy look.

  “Kindly use my rank when addressing me, lieutenant.”

  Andreani grinned and muttered something inaudible. The capitaine went over to the group of prisoners.

  “So what have they done, these men?” he asked the harki in Andreani’s section. The harki turned to the lieutenant and said nothing.

  “Go ahead, Belkacem, answer the capitaine,” Andreani said.

  “They sleep too heavily, mon capitaine. Or else they’re forgetful. Or maybe they’re deaf. We’ll see if we can cure them.”

  Belkacem went over to the prisoners and started yelling in Arabic, hitting them and kicking them. The women all began wailing together.

  “Let’s go,” Andreani gave the command. “Good day to you, mon capitaine.”

  Despite the fury suffocating him, Capitaine Degorce said nothing. He had no power over Andreani and in any case he could not absolutely swear that these arbitrary arrests would not lead to something. He said nothing. He walked round the brothel, pausing for a few moments in front of the corpses.

  (An unspeakable life. An unspeakable death.)

  When he emerged an old woman took him by the hand and began addressing him rapidly through her tears.

  “What’s she saying?”

  “She says her son has done nothing, mon capitaine,” a harki explained. “She says he’s innocent and you must bring him back. Also, she blesses you.”

  (Everyone should talk. Everyone.)

  The capitaine withdrew his moistened hand and stepped aside.

  “Tell her there’s nothing I can do.”

  *

  “If the Kabylian is taking the piss, he won’t forget it in a hurry,” Adjudant-chef Moreau says.

  Their vehicle has just parked on the Boulevard du Telemly. The sky has suddenly grown dark and for several minutes a fine, freezing rain has been falling. The concierge at the block of flats eyes the officers disapprovingly. She confirms that there
is indeed an Arab in one of the flats, a Monsieur Sahraoui, but a very well mannered, well educated gentleman, living on the third floor, and seems outraged that he might be suspected of anything at all.

  “This is what we are going to do, madame. You will come up with us and tell M. Sahraoui that there is some mail for him. Agreed?”

  “Oh no, capitaine! I can’t tell lies to this gentleman. In my profession, it’s a matter of trust …”

  “You’ll do what the capitaine tells you and shift your fat arse,” cuts in Adjudant-chef Moreau. “Otherwise I swear you’ll be taken away, you and all your family. You can put on your airs and graces in a regrouping camp. Get it?”

  The concierge’s jaw drops in horror and she complies without another word.

  (Logic reigns supreme and we are the masters of the city.)

  They make their way up the staircase as silently as possible. The muted sound of his own footsteps gives Capitaine Degorce an uneasy feeling he cannot shake off. On the third floor Moreau indicates the door to the concierge with a threatening finger. She knocks. The capitaine cocks his revolver.

  “Monsieur Sahraoui? There’s some mail for you.”

  After a few moments the door opens. The capitaine will never forget this moment. He has studied this face at the top of the organization chart for so long that he cannot doubt for a second that this is indeed him, now strangely endowed with a tangible, frail body, but at the same time it is quite impossible for this to be him, for the man standing on the threshold has seen the gun, he has seen the camouflage battledress and yet he continues smiling, as if all this were simply a chance encounter with dear, long lost friends.

  “Are you Tarik Hadj Nacer?” the capitaine asks and the man replies “yes” while continuing to smile. It is an extremely gentle and warm smile, in no way tainted with any hint of defiance or irony.

  “You are Tahar?” the capitaine insists.

  “Yes, capitaine. I am.”

  *

  The colonel has called a press conference for 18.00 hours. Despite his pointing out that a trap had been set on the Boulevard du Telemly where Moreau had orders to arrest anyone who asked to see M. Sahraoui, Capitaine Degorce had not been able to obtain any further postponement.

  “Think about it, Degorce. They’ll know all about it before the journalists have finished writing their stories. It’ll be a busted flush within a couple of hours, your trap. If you’re going to arrest anyone it’ll be now or never. Believe me.”

  Capitaine Degorce nodded and a few minutes later Moreau rang to report that he had just arrested a young woman, a so-called niece, who refused to give her name.

  “Excellent, Moreau. Come back here with your package. But leave someone there until tomorrow morning all the same. You never know.”

  The colonel is delighted.

  “Good work, Degorce, even though you had a hell of a stroke of luck! Hell’s bells! This’ll give these scum a kick in the balls. Come on, then. Let’s have a look at him, your Hadj Nacer.”

  Tahar is sitting on a mattress, his hands tied, his eyes half closed. He looks as if calmly lost in meditation and his strange smile has still not disappeared. The colonel does his number as a magnanimous and victorious warrior and starts pacing up and down the cell, holding forth in a grandiloquent manner about the profession of arms, visibly taking pleasure in listening to the sound of his own voice, wondering aloud how he, the colonel, would have acted had he been an Arab, and conceding that he would doubtless have followed the same course, he has always known how to put himself in the shoes of his enemies, he congratulates Tahar on having caused him so many problems, he becomes intoxicated with his own words, swearing enthusiastically. Capitaine Degorce dreads meeting Tahar’s eye, and looks down, overwhelmed by the weight of his shame.

  (He’s an imbecile. Always has been. The man’s total and utter imbecility is mind-blowing.)

  The muffled cry of a woman can be heard. The colonel pays no attention to it.

  “I’ll be back,” Capitaine Degorce says and leaves the cell.

  He goes into a hall at the end of the corridor. A very young woman lies stretched out on a table, with her wrists and ankles attached to its legs. Two harkis and Sergent Febvay are bending over her. Her nose is bleeding, she is naked: a handkerchief has been stuffed into her mouth. The capitaine eyes her breasts, the curve of her pale belly, the curls of her tuft, from out of which the dark and gleaming mass of an automatic pistol appears to thrust forth. For a moment it seems to him, furtively and unbearably, that she is grimacing and writhing amid the pains of a monstrous birth. In a corner of the room Adjudant-chef Moreau smokes a cigarette.

  (Logic knows no bounds. Its reign is unlimited. The Gehenna of fire.)

  “This is the bitch from Telemly,” Sergent Febvay says. “We’re trying to get some sense out of her.”

  “Remove that,” says the capitaine, indicating the gun thrust into her belly. “Remove that at once.”

  The sergent obeys.

  “Are you insane, Moreau? The press are coming and this is all you could think of doing? Get that girl dressed and send her packing.”

  “Do we really have to get her dressed, mon capitaine?” Febvay asks. “It’s a shame for the wogs,” he goes on, indicating the harkis. “It’d be a change for them from fucking goats.”

  The harkis start laughing. Capitaine Degorce takes a couple of steps towards the sergent and raises his hand to hit him, but restrains himself and his arm falls back loosely beside his body. He knows he should not have raised his hand and also knows that, having once raised it, he should not have lowered it. He speaks in an unrecognizable voice.

  “I’ll have you court-martialled, you bag of shit. Court-martialled, do you understand? I’ll have you shot.”

  The adjudant-chef goes up to him and gently takes the capitaine by the arm.

  “With respect, mon capitaine, what was all that about?”

  The capitaine stands stock-still for a long moment. He finds it difficult to meet the sergent’s eye. He moves towards the door with a haste he finds detestable.

  “Get that girl dressed, Moreau,” he says in a shaking voice. “And find the sergent an assignment where his sense of humour will be appreciated for its true worth. Anywhere, I don’t give a damn. Get him out of my sight.”

  Once out in the corridor he makes a swift about turn and marches back into the room. No-one has moved. He goes straight up to Sergent Febvay and knees him in the groin. The sergent collapses almost without a sound and Degorce lands a blow with his fist on the side of his head, using all his strength. The sergent falls, his knees drawn into his chest without even essaying a gesture of self-defence. Capitaine Degorce massages his painful hand. He observes the young man moaning at his feet. At first he feels the dazzling joy of relief. And immediately after this, pity, remorse – unspeakable powerlessness.

  *

  The journalists have come and gone. Tahar has smiled, handcuffed, amid the crackle of flash photographs. The colonel has congratulated himself on the exceptional importance of this arrest, which, he was confident, had dealt the rebellion an almost mortal blow. The colonel indicated to the journalists that they could put questions to the prisoner. Aren’t you ashamed to use women for your terrorist attacks? Do you have any feelings of remorse? Are you afraid of the guillotine? What have you to say to the families of your victims? Why do you carry on with a struggle that is already lost? Do you beg the French Republic for clemency? Tahar has listened attentively to all the questions and looked at each of the journalists with a great deal of benevolence, but has not said a word. Standing beside him, Capitaine Degorce studied the toecaps of his shoes. He was no longer even trying to shake off the grip of humiliation. He was simply waiting for the whole charade to be at an end. It occurred to him that Jeanne-Marie would see his picture in the papers next morning and would in all probability be proud of him. If she were to learn one day what he was really doing here she would be unable either to believe it or to understand it. And
she would be right: in spite of all the logic in the world, it was at bottom impossible to understand and it was better for his wife to remain in permanent ignorance.

  (How could I take her in my arms? How could I embrace the children? What could I tell them?)

  When they first met in spring 1945 he was twenty and weighed five and a half stones. She was ten years older than him and a war widow. Her husband had spent months dying of boredom on the Maginot line. He used to write that he missed her and was eager to fight and occasionally ventured upon rather daring references to chilly nights spent without her. In his last letter he wrote again that he would be ready for the Germans when they came and would love her all his life. He never had to fight. After the German offensive he fled south with all the surviving men in his battery, desperate as they were and almost without ammunition. He must have hoped he could reach Toulon or Marseille, somewhere he could find a boat to take him home to her in Corsica. But one evening when he and his comrades were resting in a field, out in the open, doubtless believing themselves to be in no danger, three Stukas spotted them and went into screaming nosedives on their position. None of them rose to his feet again. Jeanne-Marie had kept his letters and a photograph of him in his gunner’s uniform, in which he wears a somewhat embarrassed expression, as if to apologize in advance for his inglorious death and the promises of eternal love it had been so easy for him to keep. She had come to Paris in 1945 with her sister-in-law to meet up with one of her older brothers who had been taken prisoner in 1940, and was soon due to return to France with the flood of repatriated men. André Degorce had just come from Buchenwald. He was very weak, but the state of his health gave no great cause for concern and he was waiting at the Hôtel Lutetia reception centre to be reunited with his parents. Every day he consulted the listings. He tried to eat. He slept. He had no desire to live. One morning Jeanne-Marie Antonetti had appeared in the reception lobby at the Lutetia with her sister-in-law. She was seeking to be of use. Perhaps she also hoped that some miracle would restore her husband to her, ill but alive after all, and that all they would have to do would be to pick up the threads of their lost life together, just as easily as one wakes from a nightmare. She observed the concentration camp prisoners with a look of deep distress and when she caught André’s eye she had burst into tears, saying over and over again: oh heavens, the poor little fellow. She went back to see him every day. She talked to him about her missing husband and her brothers, she was worried about the youngest of them, Marcel, mobilized in 1943, who must be somewhere in Germany, alive and well, she hoped, and she rejoiced to see how André was recovering his strength. Jean-Baptiste had finally turned up, in rude health. After a few months in a prison camp he had been lucky enough to be sent to a farm where he had lived off the fat of the land throughout the war. Jeanne-Marie had let him return to Corsica with his wife. She did not want to leave until André had found his parents and she stayed with him. On the night he undressed her she had drawn him to her, sighing, my little one, my child, and closed her eyes and let him have his way. Her skin was soft and cool and, if it no longer had the firmness of a girl’s skin André would never know, for she was the first woman he had taken in his arms. A few months later they were married in Jeanne-Marie’s village church. André’s parents were not thrilled to see him marrying a woman much older than himself, but it seemed to him that what he had lived through authorized him to act without concerning himself over his parents’ consent. All of Jeanne-Marie’s family gazed with admiration at the uniform of the Saint-Cyr military academy in which he kneeled before the altar, his heart overflowing with gratitude to the Lord who delivers us from evil. After a year a daughter was born and when Marcel’s wife died in childbirth somewhere on the banks of the river Niger, Jeanne-Marie had retrieved the little boy, so that he might receive the care her brother on his own could not give him and might not lack the feminine presence necessary for his later development. Marcel was due to take back his son, Jacques, later on, but he has not done so and never even mentions the possibility. Since his marriage Capitaine André Degorce seems to have spent much more of his time separated from his nearest and dearest than in their company. The children seem to him to have grown up in abrupt, erratic bursts. When he came home from Indochina after being imprisoned there, not weighing much more than when he was released from Buchenwald, he had difficulty in recognizing them and Jeanne-Marie wept to see him, as she had in the lobby of the Lutetia that spring morning in 1945. But he thought about them continually, and his conduct was always such that they need never blush at his name. He knows this is no longer the case today. He feels infinitely remote from them and yet is afraid lest in the end the dark stench of his sin might spread to them.